2 Things I Learned From Benjamin Graham

The father of value investing offers dozens of lessons for Fools. Here are two.

Have you ever heard a story that so profoundly affected you that it changed your entire point of view? I'm sure you have. There are all sorts of tall tales of investing: of fortunes won and lost, of Rule Breakers and Rule Makers, of small-cap skyrockets and deeply hidden values. Of all the stories I know from my brief investing career, the one that inspires me most features Benjamin Graham, founder of value investing and mentor to Warren Buffett.

Graham emigrated from England with his family when he was barely a year old. He grew up in Manhattan and Brooklyn and went on to Columbia University, where he graduated in 1914. Though he had an opportunity to join the family business, Graham instead opted for a career on Wall Street. By 1920, he was a partner at a major securities firm. Six years later, he formed the Benjamin Graham Joint Account, an investment fund he ran with partner Jerome Newman. But hard times would follow. From 1929 to 1932, the Joint Account declined by a breathtaking 70%.

As if that weren't enough, the bad news kept compounding. It turns out that Graham had used substantial margin in making his selections. So when the stock market crashed, the massive debt he had incurred to buy stocks suddenly came due. And that borrowing nearly ruined him. Yet Graham persevered by selling personal assets and taking out loans with friends and family. Over the next 30 years, he and Newman would deliver 17% annualized returns to investors in the Joint Account. That's a remarkable record by any measure, and well above the stock market's historical average return of 11% annually.

Graham never recounts this story in his landmark work, The Intelligent Investor. But the lessons he learned over 30 years of making money for others spring forth from every page. Here are two that continue to serve me well in my own investing.

Lesson No. 1: Buying stocks makes you an owner.My favorite part of The Intelligent Investor comes toward the end, in the section that covers shareholder rights and responsibilities. Graham exhorts common stockholders to think of themselves as owners who have a right to answers. He writes: "Shareholders are justified in raising questions as to the competence of the management when the results (1) are unsatisfactory in themselves, (2) are poorer than those obtained by other companies that appear similarly situated, and (3) have resulted in an unsatisfactory market price of long duration."

In other words: If your investment is underperforming, you have every right to demand better. On more than one occasion, Graham did exactly that. Consider this tidbit from another wonderful investing work, John Train's Money Masters of Our Time: While combing through Interstate Commerce Commission filings in the mid-1920s, Graham found that Northern Pipeline had $95 per share in assets. The stock, however, was selling for $65 per share and yielding 9% at that price. Graham jumped at the opportunity. At the 1928 annual meeting, he garnered 38% of the proxies and was named to the company's board of directors. In that position, he would help persuade Northern Pipeline to pay out a huge $50 distribution to shareholders, clinching his original valuation thesis.

Graham considered management the stewards of stockholder money. They were to invest intelligently and create market-trouncing returns or, in lieu of that, earn enough to pay a steady, growing dividend. He also expected them to possess a high degree of competence and ethical behavior. He'd never stand to be a victim of corporate shenanigans, such as the selfish deal-making that saw Transkaryotic Therapies sell to Shire Pharmaceuticals(NASDAQ:SHPGY) for a fraction of its real worth. Nor would he tolerate the rampant bilking of shareholders through excessive options dilution, especially when renegade executives treat options like candy, as appears to be the case at Mercury Interactive(NASDAQ:MERQE). He would have taken action, as an owner should. It is because of Graham's teachings that today I take proxy season as seriously as I take any national election. You should, too.

Lesson No. 2: Always buy with a margin of safety.Graham was perhaps the first stock analyst to understand this fundamental truth about investing: Price is everything. Indeed, buying shares of a great company means nothing if you overpay. And buying rubbish on the cheap will frequently leave you with only the unpleasant odor of a rotting portfolio.

Graham details just how to buy with a margin of safety, which he calls the "central concept" of investing. Put simply, the "margin of safety" is the difference between the intrinsic value and the price at which a stock trades. For example, a security worth $50 per share but trading at $25 per share enjoys a massive 100% margin of safety. Buying in that situation heavily stacks the odds in favor of the investor.

Conversely, a stock that trades close to or above its intrinsic value offers almost no margin of safety. And buying without a margin of safety, in Graham's book, is no better than mere speculation. Or worse, gambling. Consider the recent performance of oft-hyped stocks Ballard Power(NASDAQ:BLDP), Fuel Cell Technologies(NASDAQ:FCEL), and Worldspace(NASDAQ:WRSP) to see what I mean.

Finally, seeking a substantial margin of safety can light the path to outsized returns. It has certainly helped Philip Durell, advisor/analyst for Motley Fool Inside Value. Take his investment in Intuit(NASDAQ:INTU), for example. When Philip recommended it in the March 2005 issue, the stock enjoyed a very healthy 25% margin of safety. Subscribers who followed his advice and invested are already up more than 26%.

The Foolish bottom lineI've read and re-read my copy of The Intelligent Investor. It is lined with yellow highlighter ink. Reading that book was one of the most important steps I took toward developing a lucid investment strategy. And I believe Buffett was right when he called it the "best book on investing ever written."

I treasure Graham's work because he took research seriously. His use of data is so crisp and compelling that he could have been a lawyer. Every page advances the argument that if you want to beat the market, you must buy stocks on sale. The Intelligent Investor offers the richest blueprint I've yet seen for how to do exactly that. Fortunately, Fool, we're prepared to give it to you for free.

Sign up for a one-year subscription to Inside Value, and you'll get the book and full access to a service that has beaten the market since inception. We'll refund your money in full within 30 days if you're not completely satisfied. And you can cancel at any time without obligation. That's a margin of safety any Fool can appreciate.

This article was originally published on May 31, 2005. It has been updated.

Fool contributor Tim Beyers breaks the rules in his portfolio from time to time, but he appreciates a good value as much as any Fool. Tim didn't own stock in any of the companies mentioned in this story at the time of publication. To see what stocks are in Tim's portfolio, check out his Fool profile. The Motley Fool has an ironclad disclosure policy.

Author

Tim Beyers first began writing for the Fool in 2003. Today, he's an analyst for Motley Fool Rule Breakers and Motley Fool Supernova. At Fool.com, he covers disruptive ideas in technology and entertainment, though you'll most often find him writing and talking about the business of comics. Find him online at timbeyers.me or send email to tbeyers@fool.com. For more insights, follow Tim on Google+ and Twitter.